“It’s my life too,” I say.
“But what give you the right to tell niggers how to live?”
The rest of them yell out their approval. “THAT’S RIGHT! THAT’S ALL RIGHT!!”
“Well …” one deep voice keeps saying.
“The earth is gettin’ too far from the sun,” an older woman’s voice calls. I can’t see who it belongs to.
“I’m not trying to tell anybody anything,” I explain.
“Yes, you are,” says Darryl, pointing his finger accusingly. “Yes, you are. You trying to say we should go beg when we in the position to get something for ourselves.” “That’s not true,” I tell all of them. “I’m trying to help.”
“Now that’s bullshit,” says Darryl’s mother.
“Yeah, right, Mr. Nice Guy,” Bobby taunts me.
“You trying to short us again,” Darryl says.
“No, I’m not,” I say, putting up my hands defensively, like one of them’s about to take a swing at me out of the darkness. “I’m just trying to keep us all alive.”
“You trying to take the shit out of our hands when it’s ours.”
“Jew-Man,” another voice in the dark says.
“All right!” I shout. “All right! The hell with all of you. Stick to your stupid, goddamn unreasonable list of demands and keep trying to sell crack. You’re all going down in flames anyway.”
“Well, there’s at least one white motherfucker going down with us,” Darryl says.
They all start roaring at once. “EEEYAHHHHH!!! MISTTTERNICEGUY! FFUGGGIMMMUPP!” I feel like an actor onstage being booed by an invisible audience beyond the footlights. I hear the clatter of a gun being picked out of the pile on the dining room table. There are sounds of laughter and hands slapping.
“Right?” Aaron is saying. “Right?”
“You tell ’im, Darryl,” says his mother.
“What’d he say?” the little girl, LaToya, is asking.
“EEEEEEEEYYYYEEE AAAAHHH!!! MISSSSSTERRRR NICEGUYYY!!!!”
“TELLLIM D! TELLIM!”
They’re getting louder and louder now. It’s starting to sound like a victory celebration in a high school locker room.
In the meantime, the light in the room has gone flat. The regular program on television must have gone to a blank screen before switching to a commercial. It’s hard to see anything now and almost impossible to pick a phrase out of the racket Darryl and his friends are making. All it sounds like is “pop that five-o” and a lot of indiscriminate “motherfuckers.”
All the air feels used up in here. A vein pulses in my brow and I take a small step forward into the darkness. A hand grabs my elbow and something brushes against my head. I don’t know what it is, but it has teeth.
I duck away from it, but it comes back again, landing on my forehead and raking across my scalp. It doesn’t so much hurt now, as promise to start really hurting in a second. I begin struggling to get away, but somebody has my other elbow and the thing touches my head once more. It’s hard and cold with jagged edges. I get scared it’s going to start ripping through my scalp at any moment.
“Get that fuckin’ thing away from me!” I scream.
“Huh,” somebody says. “He mad.”
Just then, a commercial comes on the TV, making the light a little brighter, so I can finally see what’s been touching my head. It’s the kind of big African-looking comb I’ve noticed black kids using on the train and outside the office.
Darryl sees me staring at it and he gives me his rictus grin again. “I just want you to look pretty before you die,” he says, flourishing the comb like a downtown stylist.
The rest of them start giggling hysterically, as though this was some great high school prank we’ve all been in on. But to me it’s been more like a gross violation and I reach out and give Darryl a good shove with both hands. He goes back a step or two, and for a second he just seems stunned. As the TV starts to flicker like a strobe light, I see his eyes open a little wider. Somebody takes a deep sniff” and somebody else mutters, “Oh shit.”
Without any further warning, Darryl charges me like a bull and shoves me back with all his might. Instead of letting me fall over, though, somebody catches me from behind and shoves me back toward the center of the circle people have formed. As my trajectory carries me forward, I stick out my arm and hit somebody standing on the side. I think I’ve just smacked him in the mouth. Maybe hard enough to draw blood.
Again, I’m caught before I hit the floor and somebody standing in front of me pushes me backward. It’s like a malicious version of the old kids’ game of Trust, made even scarier by the way the flickering TV light breaks up what you see. All you can make out is somebody’s gesture or expression, frozen in time, but not what led up to it or what’s about to follow.
Everybody’s getting too frenzied with all the shoving, breathing, and cursing in high, crazy voices. I start thinking one of these guys is bound to have a knife, so maybe he’s going to just reach out and puncture me as I go flying by. I try to grab a hold of something and steady myself, but my arms just flail out uselessly. With each shove, the game is getting more out of control and violent. I feel the blood sloshing around in my head and the dampness on my back where their sweaty palms have been touching me. If I don’t kill one of them right now, they’ll kill me.
Suddenly there’s a flare-up of light from outside, and I see Darryl’s face again, just a foot or two in front of me. If I had a gun right now, I’d shoot him. But it might be easier just to kick him in the balls and step on his head when he’s down. I picture grinding his bloody face into the rug and hearing the crunch of bones in his neck.
But just as I begin to raise my leg, the phone starts ringing and everything else gets very quiet all of a sudden. For what seems like an hour, the only sound is that phone. It must ring at least a dozen times. The cops calling again. Trying to find out what’s going on. Or maybe offering one last shot at getting us all out of here alive. The others look at Darryl expectantly, as if he knows just what to do. But he stays rooted to the spot, not even looking over at the phone. Turning his eyes away, like he’s afraid to see it ringing. I feel a slow ache spreading across my chest.
The phone stops ringing.
With the break, everybody seems to chill out a little. The sounds from outside have also stopped and the bright light is gone. A different kind of tension makes its way around the room. Everyone’s thinking the same thing: I hope they don’t come rushing in now and kill us all.
“Why everybody stop talking?” I hear LaToya, the little girl from the bathroom, asking from somewhere behind me. “Are we apposed to be scared?”
I think about the bruise on her face and feel a little cold inside.
On the other side of the room, somebody lights up a crack pipe. It makes for an eerie scene, with the lights down. The sound of the cocaine burning and crackling seems about ten times louder than normal. Almost like twigs snapping next to your ear. This must be what it’s like being out in the woods when you know there are bears nearby. I think about my mother and how she tried to get me to start praying when my father wasn’t around. I’m sorry it never took.
“You know that was probably the hostage negotiator trying to call you just now,” I say with a sigh escaping from somewhere deep inside of me.
“Yeah,” Darryl answers flatly, as though I’d just said something boring about the weather. He just doesn’t give a shit.
My eyelids are heavy and my brain feels sodden. I’m starting to realize how very, very tired I am. I don’t even know if I’d mind them finishing it off once and for all now.
“I dunno, Darryl,” I tell him, “I spent all this time trying to understand guys like you, and in the end, I guess I don’t have a clue.”
“No one knows me,” he says bitterly. “Understand? No one. Not in my mentality. You wanna be me? You wanna know how I feel? FUCK YOU! THAT’S HOW I FEEL!!”
It’s useless. I tell myself I’m dead already and it doe
sn’t matter anymore. I don’t know why I even bother saying anything else; the words just come out. “Well, I was going to say you could try calling the guy back,” I tell him in an exhausted voice.
Darryl doesn’t say anything. He just breathes out loudly.
“You wrote down his number, didn’t you?”
There’s a long silence. And in the weak light I see Darryl give me that half hurt, half resentful look that I’ve come to recognize over the years at Probation. It’s the way illiterate people look at you when you ask them if they can read.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or find a way to blow my brains out.
For the first time in his life, Darryl King has some real power. Not just to chase some rival crack dealer off his corner. He can bring the system to its knees, right here and now. He’s got the authorities and the media listening to him. He can demand amnesty or he can call for justice for Jamal Perkins, or ask for safe passage for his family to get out of here, or whatever the hell he wants. In the end, he might get only part of what he’s asking for or none of it, but he can at least get everything to stop for a while and make his voice heard.
But none of that will happen. Because Darryl King doesn’t have what it takes to go up against the system. Because the system never gave him the equipment to do it. He never got the basic skills required to write down a phone number. And even if he could, he never stood much of a chance anyway, with everything else that’s happened. As he stares toward the living room window, looking a little overwhelmed, I could almost feel sorry for him. But I can’t afford sympathy anymore. That side of me is dead and I need it to stay dead. Darryl is ready to kill me at any time, and I have to be ready to kill him. A man does what he does to survive, my father said. For the first time, the words come alive to me.
From outside, I start to hear something familiar, getting nearer. A fierce fluttering noise. A cool breeze stirring the unbearably hot night. The curtains on the window shimmy slightly. It’s the whir of a helicopter’s propeller, closing in on us. The gust of air blows dollar bills and rolling papers all over the place.
“What’d I tell you?” says Darryl.
For a second, I can almost believe they’ve given in to his demands. But then I realize it has to be the opposite. They’re probably making a last fly-by attempt to see if they can get a shot at Darryl or one of the others before they break down the front door. Or maybe it’s just a distraction.
“Come on, Moms,” Darryl says with a burst of boyish enthusiasm. “They gonna land it on the roof for us.”
As the searchlight sweeps through the apartment, I see her looking more glassy-eyed than ever. “What?” she says.
Just then, the TV picture dies and the room gets completely dark. There’s a mood of hushed anticipation, like a surprise birthday is about to begin, but I feel dread eating away at the pit of my stomach. I remember seeing a movie where the cops cut all the electricity in a building just before they moved in on a hostage situation.
“Darryl, what happened to my program?” his mother says. “I was just watching.”
I hear the first explosion and see the first flash of light through the white sheet hanging in the bedroom doorway. I can’t imagine how the cops got through the window back there without anybody noticing. There’s a second, louder explosion. The impact makes Darryl stagger and it shakes the chair out from under me. Darryl’s great-grandmother comes out of one of the other back rooms with a teacup and saucer rattling in her hand. Everyone gets down on hands and knees and starts screaming at the same time.
Darryl’s hoarse voice rises above all the others. “NO ONE KNOWS ME!!”
I look up and see the bed sheet hanging in the doorway is on fire, but there aren’t any cops coming out. It’s not a raid. Somehow, something back there must’ve ignited and hit an ether tank or something. Now the whole apartment is flashing over. It’s like someone’s turned on a giant blowtorch. The fire from the bed sheet catches the carpet in this room and soon there’s heavy black smoke everywhere.
I feel the heat on my skin as I roll onto my stomach. It’s not quite as bad down here yet, but the flames are racing along the paint on the walls and most of the furniture is burning.
“HELP ME PLEASE!” a woman’s voice keeps calling.
I raise my eyes and see Darryl’s mother getting consumed by fire. Her legs and her back are smoldering. Bobby Kirk grabs a tablecloth to try to smother her, but it’s already caught fire and his hands get scorched. I start coughing and choking on the smoke as I crawl around on my hands and knees, looking for the front door.
I see the dining room table is still covered with guns. An idea flashes through my mind about grabbing one and turning to look for Darryl. But then I hear my father’s voice in my head, telling me to survive again, and I keep looking for the front door. It can’t be far from here.
Something falls on the carpet in front of me and a small fire starts in my path. I go down on my elbows and shift direction. As I turn, I see the glass-and-wood cabinet with the old tenants’ family pictures and Bibles glowing from the heat. Soon the flames begin to lick at the walls around it and the cabinet collapses.
Tears are forming in my eyes and my contact lenses are starting to dry up and crinkle under my eyelids. I’m getting confused and disoriented. I spin around several more times, trying to find the front door, and put my hand in a pile of bobby pins and toothpicks. In a momentary clearing, I see Aaron yanking open what I know to be a closet door and jumping in.
The smoke is beginning to blind me. There’s no thing or landmark to tell me where I am in the room, but I try not to panic. I spin around again and crawl along for a few more steps before I run into somebody. A living body. I reach out and touch a frail bony arm and a weak shoulder. It’s impossible to see a face with all this smoke. Whoever it is feels down my arm and then takes my hand, like we’re going to try to make it to the door together. The grip is warm and reassuring, what you’d expect from someone who’s raised children.
“All right,” I say hoarsely. “Let’s do it.”
We begin to move in the same direction, away from the main source of heat. The smoke starts to change direction and a little clearing forms ahead of us. My hand is released and I look up for the first time to see Darryl King has been the one holding it.
He just stares at me for a long while as we face each other on our hands and knees. There’s something oddly pacific in his eyes. Like he’s going to ask me to join him in a silent act of communion. But I’ve already been through all that and my mind is made up that I will try to kill him, even if it means using my bare hands to strangle him.
I reach for him, and at the same moment his hand comes shooting out at me. My heart stops. But instead of grabbing my throat, his hand lands on my shoulder and roughly shoves me out of the way. Without giving me another look, he turns and starts to crawl off, like he’s trying to find another way to the door. I notice flames riding up his back and climbing his neck, on their way to his brains. I think for a second about going after him, but my skin is starting to prickle, and if I don’t get out soon, it’ll bubble off my bones. There’s a constant deep rumbling everywhere, like the sound of a fireplace amplified ten times over. I keep plunging ahead.
As I go to my left, I become aware of a loud, piercing shriek. Someone else is burning to death very nearby.
I open my eyes wide and the stinging is almost more than I can bear. At last I focus. LaToya, the little girl I’d seen in the bathroom before, is lying on her back about three yards away. What looks like a small bonfire is burning on her stomach and she’s trying to beat it out with her bare hands.
A smell like hair frying fills my nostrils and I see the little girl giving me a pleading look. She opens her mouth as though she’s going to say something to me, but nothing comes out.
I put my hand out and realize I’m touching the front door. The knob is surprisingly cool to the touch. I turn it, but the door doesn’t open. That’s when I notice a smaller knob for
the lock underneath and a chain about a foot above it. In the seconds it takes to undo them, my lungs fill up with more poison and my chest feels like it’s about to burst.
I finally get the door open and go lunging out into the hall, landing at a funny angle. It feels like I’ve broken my ankle, but somehow I’m managing to keep the door open with it. I’m lying there, looking back into the apartment. I hear people screaming and the crackling sound of fire eating more of the paint off the walls. But all I can see is more heavy toxic smoke coming out, choking me and burning my eyes. It’s like staring into the abyss. I’m about to pass out at any minute from the fumes. This must be what hell smells like.
The little girl’s voice cries out and I hear someone who sounds like Darryl shouting. Just then there’s a powerful blast of air and the door starts to close, pushing my foot out of the way. The set of muscles that I was sure would have kept it there, propping the door open, don’t respond anymore. Something over the past few minutes, hours, days, weeks, and years has worn them down. My foot moves just a little more out of the way and the door slams shut.
Everything goes black for a moment and my head hits the floor. The roar I’ve had in my ears is muffled. When I open my eyes again, the hall is filled with smoke and more is starting to seep out from under the front door.
I look over and see a bunch of Emergency Service Unit cops coming through the stairwell door, followed by a couple of firemen in black turn-out coats and helmets. They look like huge dark moths hovering there.
“How many of them still in there?” the fireman with the extinguisher can asks me.
“I don’t know.”
Most of the cops fan out through the hall with their weapons drawn. Only a couple go to help the fireman with the ax and the iron crowbar who’s trying to get the apartment door open. “It’s a snap lock,” he says. “Half of them are probably baked already.”
If your heart gets broken too often, it doesn’t work anymore, I told Andrea. A man does what he does to survive, my father told me. You’re not any better than me, Darryl said. I listen for the little girl’s voice, but I don’t hear it anymore.
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